Sadder still, the "benefits" which you can get by fielding Nork can mostly achieved by other means ... with less points cost and better results! Want CC prowess? Well Col Straken strikes better (WS5) and harder (s6), ignores armour saves and does 2D6 against vehicles. Nork give you stubborn USR? Straken gives you fearless. Feel no Pain and body guards? Well Nork out cost 2 body guards and a medic upgrade by close to twice the amount. Nork's advantage of being T5 doesn't even come into play most of the time as he is bunched with a group of humans all the time. You can argue Nork could eat a krak missile and still do the feel no pain, well by that logic something is really wrong should a competent opponent decides to shove high str AV rounds into your command squad.

Also from the same codex we have exhibit B: Mr. Mogul Kamir. For almost 80% the cost of an entirely new squad of rough riders you get Mr. Kamir to take over as the squad leader of your rough rider squad but by doing so you lost control of the squad as they gain rage USR. So let us get this straight, you can spend a lot of point to make your rough rider squad always angry... so angry in fact they will charge out into open field and get shot to pieces because they have lousy stats (T3 and 5+sv, any one?), thus totally nullifying their place as the counter assault unit, what gives?

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The "Nork syndrome" is buffling in the extreme because it DOES NOT:

1. Help GW sell more models, for they cost high points and eats into the army budget in question
2. Offer "codex creep" factor to subtlety encourage power players to switch to IG
3. Serve to further popularize heroic charactesr in the 40k universe.

The only hypothesis I can come out with is that there are a bunch of executives are making questionable decisions inside GW, and my money is on the same bunch of people who authorised Ultramarine The Movie. Why do you think?